Isla let his promise sit for a beat, tasting the aftertaste of it — competence wrapped in menace. She could feel the practical logic: the ledger first, Mirov gone after, a silent cleanup. It was a clean solution, ugly but efficient. She nodded once, small and deliberate.

“All right,” she said, voice even. “We do it your way — ledger first, then Mirov. You get your silence, and I get the paper and a clean exit.” Her words were an agreement, not a surrender.

But she made sure he knew the price of that trust. Isla’s eyes narrowed in a look that held steel more than warmth. “I’m accepting this on conditions. I want names and times for your cleanup contacts — who they answer to, how long they take, and what they need from us. I need confirmation that the extraction routes are locked and that there’s a medical contingency if containment goes sideways. Those are non-negotiable.”

She stepped back slightly, folding the deal into the ledger of risks she carried. “I don’t trust you yet, Calder,” she added bluntly, “but I accept the temporary alliance. Prove me wrong.”

Rain tapped the window. The clock kept time. The plan, ugly and precise, began to take shape.

Isla listens to the names and lets them settle like facts on a table: Nicole, Angela, Giovanni, Kevin, Kayla. She doesn't react with warmth — she never does when someone offers people as currency — but she does sharpen, like a blade readied.

“Names help,” she says, voice even, “but names aren’t enough.”

She steps closer until the lamp throws both their faces into the same pool of light and lays out what she needs, precise and unromantic:

“I want photos — recent, full body — and the exact positions they’ll hold tonight. Which uniforms are they wearing? Which one will be posted directly outside the lounge door, and under what cover story? Tell me who, if anyone, officially liaises with House Security so we’re not surprised by an unforeseen patrol.”

Her tone shifts to logistics. “Medical contingency: which of your people are med-trained? Who carries sedatives and who carries the reversal or basic first aid? If someone’s rendered unconscious, I want a breathing monitor on them. No deaths if there’s another option.”

She taps the edge of the nightstand once, counting off the next demands like coordinates. “Comms: give me radio channels or a dead-drop schedule, and the call signs your team will use. Extraction: where is the car staged? What valet ticket will we present? What are your cleanup team’s ETAs and their chain of command if something goes sideways?”

Isla watches him for micro-tells as she speaks — any hesitation would be data. “Give me those details plainly,” she adds, “and I work with your people. Leave them vague and I walk out that door and never look back. This is time bought, not trust. Make it count, Calder.”

Isla absorbed every detail he offered, dissecting the information with the quiet, predatory stillness of someone who’d spent her adult life deciding what could be trusted and what absolutely could not. The pieces he withheld didn’t surprise her — no agency volunteer-hands their people’s blood type and home addresses, and she didn’t expect him to. What mattered was that the operational gaps were filled. They were.

By the time the plan was fully locked into place, her jaw had unclenched, though not entirely. Relaxation wasn’t in her nature — but the hard edge of suspicion had eased into something more like functional tolerance.

Then he said, “Okay, so you’ll stay here tonight.”

Her spine stiffened instinctively. The room. The one bed. The implications. The risks.

Before she could speak, he glanced at the bed and visibly winced. “You take the bed, I’ll sleep on the floor.”

Isla blinked, surprised by the instinctive gentleman-gesture — genuine, almost awkward in its earnestness. She didn’t trust him, not yet, but she noted the gesture. Catalogued it. Filed it under makes inconvenient attempts at decency.

He excused himself for a shower, and Isla let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. Alone, she set about making the room operational: she checked the door’s deadbolt, wedged a folded towel into the latch as a sound trap, placed her garrote wire within reach beside the bed, and swept the corners for surveillance points out of habit. The room appeared clean — but she trusted that about as much as she trusted him.

The shower shut off. A moment later, he stepped out with nothing but a towel, and Isla’s hand went automatically, reflexively to the knife sheath hidden under her blazer.

He mumbled an apology, flustered, grabbed his clothes, and vanished back into the bathroom.

Only then did she exhale — not embarrassed, but annoyed with herself for reacting at all.

When he returned dressed in sweats and a worn t-shirt, she straightened.

“Next time,” she said coolly, “announce yourself before walking out half-naked. My reflexes don’t care that you’re unarmed.”

Her gaze flicked briefly to the bed, then back to him.

“And you’re not sleeping on the floor. If we’re playing the Orlovs tomorrow, I need to study proximity. Their mannerisms don’t work if we can’t even sit beside each other without bristling.”

A beat. Then, clipped:

“But don’t read into it. Pillows down the middle. Try not to snore.”